The present invention relates generally to surgical instruments, and more particularly, to minimally invasive surgical instruments.
Open surgery, in which a large incision is made in a patient's body, has the risk of trauma to healthy tissue, slowed recovery, and complications from infection and scar adhesion. Minimally invasive surgical techniques attempt to overcome these risks by inserting surgical instruments through a pre-existing orifice or a small puncture or incision, rather than the large incision of previous techniques. Surgeons use surgical instrument tips mounted on a rod and placed into the body cavity through small incisions, actuating the instrument tips using hand grips located outside the body cavity.
While minimally invasive techniques have been used in endoscopic (gastrointestinal) and laparoscopic (abdominal) surgery, they have proved difficult to apply in thoracic surgery. For thoracic surgery, hand instruments must be unique: moving and turning the large lung lobes requires instruments that can apply more torque and carry more weight than standard laparoscopic (abdominal) instruments.
Performing minimally invasive surgery requires precise instrument control because of the restricted range of motion for instruments. Thus there is a need for precisely controlled instruments with smooth movements. At the same time, complicated instruments with many parts are expensive to manufacture, break easily, and are difficult to sterilize.
Minimally invasive surgery in the thoracic area would not only help avoid the health complications listed above, when compared with conventional techniques, but would also help avoid systemic traumas such as loss of body temperature, tissue desiccation, and other issues related to tissue exposure.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for an instrument for minimally invasive thoracic surgery that can easily apply torque to move and turn large lung lobes, and that is precisely controlled, robust, inexpensive to manufacture, and easy to sterilize.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an instrument for performing thoracic surgical procedures which provides increased torque and carries more weight than conventional minimally invasive surgical instruments.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an instrument for performing thoracic surgical procedures that permits precise control of the instrument by a surgeon.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an instrument for performing thoracic surgical procedures that is robust, inexpensive to manufacture, and easy to sterilize.
Other general and specific objects of this invention will in part be obvious and in part be evident from the drawings and description which follow.